Yesterday was Winnipeg Harvest Game Day at Imagine Games and Hobbies, here in Winnipeg. It’s the time of year that the good folks at Imagine host a bunch of games and contests, lay out a bunch of nice holiday treats, and ask people to donate to Winnipeg Harvest. As I have the past several years, I put together a Christmas-themed RPG one-shot to run.
This year, I chose Feng Shui 2, from Atlas Games. I chose FS2 because it’s fast, easy to teach, and can be run in a goofy, light-hearted style that suits these kinds of games ((In the past, I have run Gamma World, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and Firefly.)). This was my first chance to try creating an adventure in FS2, so it took me a little longer than I had expected, and I found a couple of problems with it in play that I manage to correct on the fly.
But I got the adventure created, and here’s the pitch I used:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, but not everyone is happy. Someone hates Christmas, hates happiness, hates Santa! And this year, when Santa’s workshop (and powerful Feng Shui site) is attacked, only Hong Kong’s premiere team of hard-luck heroes – the Dragons – has a chance of kicking butt and getting Santa back on schedule!
Silent night, chi warrior? Not likely!
Now, I tied the adventure into the cosmology and backstory of the Chi Wars, but it’s pretty loose. That’s mainly because I didn’t think there’d be anyone there who would care too much about how this adventure fit in, and I was right about that. Still, there’s a rationale for what’s going on, and some touches in the description that can clue players familiar with the FS2 universe that this is taking place in the middle of the Chi Wars.
I had three players ((Almost had zero – only one person signed up, but he canceled. But I had one person show that hadn’t signed up, and another who was in the store and decided to play, and a friend I texted when I saw the sorry state of the sign-up sheet came down to join us.)), only one of which was at all familiar with the game. I’ve gotten a lot better at teaching the basics of the game quickly, and had them pick archetypes, name them, add the melodramatic hook, and give them a run-down of the basic mechanics in less than 15 minutes. And then we got going.
Butts are being kicked.
Play ran a little longer than I had planned – three-and-a-half hours instead of three – but not too bad. Everyone had fun, and Santa was saved, so yay!
Thanks to Sandy, Chris, and Maya for coming to Santa’s rescue.
The donation bin was pretty full when I left the store, but I don’t know the final total going to Winnipeg Harvest. Still, we did not too badly ((This is pretty high praise in Canada, just so you know.)). So, that’s good, too.
And, with the kind permission of Atlas Games, I am giving a gift to all the Feng Shui 2 fans out there: here’s the adventure I ran, Blood on the Snow. Use it wisely, Chi Warriors!
I’m still behind on my blogging. I’ve got two posts ((That I haven’t written yet.)) that should be going up before this one, but you’re getting this one because there’s some time sensitivity to it: the Kickstarter for Feng Shui 2 is supposed to go live this week, so I wanted to get my impressions up before that.
TL; DR – Feng Shui 2 is an awful lot of fun, and you should back it as soon as the campaign starts.
Feng Shui is an awesome game by Robin D. Laws from 1996 that captures the style and feel of the early Hong Kong action movies and ((To a lesser degree.)) wuxia. I got a copy of the Atlas Gamesversion of the game, but never got a chance to play it – the approach was different enough at the time that I didn’t quite get it, and didn’t have a group that I could force it on.
Earlier this year, I found out that Feng Shui 2 was in the works. Robin was doing a new edition of the game, and it was going to be published by Atlas, starting with a Kickstarter to get things going. At the time this was announced, there was a call for playtesters, but I really didn’t have time in my gaming schedule to commit to a serious playtest of a new system ((If I’m going to do an “official” playtest, I tend to take it pretty seriously, as evidenced by my posts on The Dresden Files RPG and, indeed, the existence of this blog.)), so I just sighed and resigned myself to waiting for the publication.
Then, Cam Banks started looking for GenCon GMs to run FS2 events. I checked to see if I could fit that into my schedule, and couldn’t. But Cam said that he’d give me the playtest package to use to run the game at Games on Demand, and I jumped at that chance ((Thanks again, Cam!)).
So, I got to run FS2 at Games on Demand, and enjoyed it so much that I wanted to try it again with a group at home, where we could take more time and explore it a little more. Both sessions were a lot of fun, and everyone at both tables seemed to enjoy themselves a lot.
Now, the ruleset I’m using is a playtest document, so I’m not going to go into too much detail about specifics – they may still change before publications, but I’ve got some observations I want to share.
Characters
Back when I saw the first edition of Feng Shui, I was kind of taken aback by the idea of choosing an archetype, doing some pretty minimal customization, and playing that rather than building my own character from scratch. Since that time, other games like Apocalypse World and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying and Lady Blackbird using similar ((And, in some cases, more restrictive.)) methods of character creation. I’ve lost my fear of such systems, and have grown to appreciate the way such approaches get you up and playing quickly.
FS2 sticks with the picking of an archetype, but you don’t customize mechanical things about your character ((Not entirely true – swapping out some character abilities is offered as an advanced option.)). Instead, you customize the backstory and motivations of your character, adding life to the numbers that way. There are over 30 different archetypes in the playtest document, so you’ve got lots of variety – pretty much every major character type from the source material is covered ((Though, after rewatching A Better Tomorrow, I found myself wanting a Reformed Gangster archetype, so I could play Sung Tse-Ho.)), plus some interesting variations based on the game’s setting.
System
The system is pretty similar to the original game, but the mechanics have been vastly simplified. All the information you need to play your character is right there on the character sheet, and you don’t have to deal with large lists of skills and abilities.
This is not to say that there isn’t a lot of options for your character. Most of the options are covered by broad skills or abilities and a simple rule for default rolls when you don’t actually have a rating in whatever you’re trying to do ((Example? Sure! The player of the Old Master in our last playtest decided that he was blind, which was fine – it was just character colour, and didn’t limit him. Blind masters are common in wuxia movies. But then he decided that he wanted to use his heightened hearing to check the heartbeat of someone they were interviewing to see if he was lying. I thought that was a cool idea, but didn’t want it to become a defining schtick, so I just had him roll on the default skill level. Took about thirty seconds to figure out how to do that in game, and he got a cool character moment that wasn’t covered by the rules. Easy.)). What it means is that players can rapidly master their characters and resolution is quick and flavourful.
Combat ((Yeah, it’s part of the system, but in a game like this, combat deserves a bit of special comment.))
There are three things about combat you should know:
Stunts. When you do something in combat, whether attacking a foe or dodging a hail of automatic weapon fire or trying haul babies out of an exploding hospital, you are encouraged ((In the original system, in fact, you were penalized if you didn’t come up with a cool description.)) to phrase it as an action-movie-style stunt. So, you don’t just shoot the mook, you slide across the polished bar-top, scattering bottles, and fly off the end ((In slow motion, of course.)) while firing two .45s into the chest of the foe, who staggers back into a giant mirror which smashes and rains glass down on the whole area. Now, the description of the stunt doesn’t have any mechanical effect, but it has a narrative one – it makes your characters as cool as their movie counterparts. It supports the theme and style of the game brilliantly.
Shots. Initiative is handled by the same shots system as the original game ((Though there may be a few tweaks. It’s been a while since I looked at the original, so I can’t say for certain.)), which provides an interesting, fluid structure to the fights. There’s a bit of a risk though: if you roll low and others roll high on your initiative, you could have some folks taking multiple turns before you get to do anything. It’s not a huge problem, because each turn takes very little time to resolve. The longest part of the turn is trying to come up with the coolest stunt you can.
Up Checks. One of the coolest aspects of combat, in my opinion, is the way characters don’t have hit points the way they do in other games. As you accumulate damage, you become more impaired (i.e., you take a penalty to rolls) and, at a certain threshold you need to start making checks to see if you can stay on your feet. What that means in play is that, once you reach a certain level of injury, your character could drop at any point. Even if he or she doesn’t, you may have to make a check at the end of combat to see if you were wounded badly enough to die ((After a touching scene with your comrades, where you get to utter a few parting words.)). This uncertainty adds a level of risk to combat that I haven’t seen since Unknown Armies, where the GM tracks hit points, and just describes the injuries to the players.
Setting
The setting is an adjusted version of the original Chi War setting. You still have your genre-bending, time-hopping badasses fighting for possession of various feng shui sites so as to control the secret history of the world, but the four time junctures have switched up a bit. Now you get to play in the modern era, in 690 CE ((During the reign of the woman emperor, Wu Zetian.)), in 1850 CE ((During a fairly dark period of European domination of China.)), and 2074 CE ((Where
)) ((Why is that in a spoiler tag? That bit of backstory forms part of the plot of the intro adventure.)), as well as in the spooky, mystical Netherworld that links these time periods.
The assumption is that you will play members of the Dragons, a Chi War faction that mainly wants to prevent the various other factions from exerting their cross-time tyranny over the common citizen of the planet. They have – once again – been pretty much wiped out, and the PCs are new recruits dragged into the conflict.
If you don’t think that sounds cool, there’s no hope for you.
Play Experience
So, that’s the bones of it all, but anyone can get that from reading the rules. How does it play at the table?
Awesome. It’s fast, it’s flavourful, and it creates great cinematic moments.
Now, the basic structure of the game, like the source material, is somewhat formulaic – adventures are crafted around big, set-piece fights, and then connections are built to help get from one fight to another. That said, one of the things I tried in both playtests ((But emphasized in the most recent one.)) was taking more time with the between-fight stuff, letting the players roleplay more, interact with the world ((In non-fighty ways.)), and generally try the system in non-combat contexts. The simple resolution system let things flow, the characters’ Melodramatic Hooks ((That’s the game term for the aspect of the character’s backstory that drives him or her to do crazy, action-movie things – stuff like “I must avenge the murder of my father!” or “I will find a worthy heir for my family kung fu style!”)) kept them pushing forward, and the style and theme of the game kept them all being over-the-top awesome.
Summary
Feng Shui 2 is one of the most fun systems I have ever run. The setting is crazy, the mechanics are both simple and flavourful, and it’s very fast to get a new group up and running. These are all things I look for in games these days, and they are here in spades. We all had a lot of fun playing, and I’ve added the game to the list of campaigns I will pitch to my players when one of my current campaigns wraps up.
The Kickstarter is slated to begin later this week, according to Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff ((Which, incidentally, is a good podcast to listen to if you’re interested in finding out more about FS2. Hell, it’s just a good podcast to listen to, regardless.)). There will probably be some more info once the campaign goes live, so look for that.
And back the project, Chi Warrior! The Dragons need all the help they can get!
Random Quote
And three words on the tip of my tongue Not to be spoken nor sung Or whispered to anyone Til I scream them at the top of my lungs again
